Garden Makeover: Before and After

When we moved into the vicarage six months ago the back garden obviously hadn’t been used for a while. It was covered in gravel and old slippery decking with a two foot drop onto paving slabs for the children to run their scooters off!

Despite that, it’s a lovely private area so we were keen to make it a usable extension of our living space. We had the decking taken up, but that still left us with a garden full of gravel for the winter. Not very visually attractive or child-friendly!
Thankfully in the spring the diocese found some money in their budget so we were able to re-design the space and I’m so happy at how it turned out! Here’s some before and afters:

Firstly we had fences and a gate put up to make it completely child-proof. For the first time ever we have a garden where the children can go out of the patio doors and I know they can’t get out of the garden, which is wonderful!
We also had a little patio area and one border put in. It’s just big enough to look lovely, but it’s also really manageable. We painted the fence a slate grey and added some solar lights and planted up the border with a country cottage feel.

I’ve never been much into gardening as our previous gardens have been very overlooked and I didn’t really enjoy just pottering around in them, but I’ve decided to teach myself a bit and to make an effort to keep this looking nice. Although expensive, it was fun planting from scratch and creating our own design idea; we also know what everything is and how to manage it.

It’s already been so lovely to see how things are growing, developing and coming into flower. Our house backs onto fields and we have quite a dense bank of trees, bracken and wild flowers overflowing the fence so that’s also been fun watching how that has changed through the seasons. I think we’ll have blackberries and other berries in the autumn.

Having a garden like this is truly a blessing and one that we do not take for granted! Having a private outside space is good for my soul, and the kids absolutely love having a place they can safely run off some energy. I look forward to learning lots and developing it further!